How to Write Amazing Product Reviews that Converts

I see many people struggling with their affiliate product reviews, they fail for different reasons, and some of them don’t know what to write, or don’t have the gift or the ability to convince someone to buy. Some others don’t have the guts to promote a product, probably because they are shy or don’t feel it’s right! They are afraid it will turn to something bad, losing their readers for example! Well.. If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, you must find a way.

In this post I will highlight ways that may help you out and increase your reviews conversion.

Be Honest

Something I learned about doing business is to be honest to “myself” before being honest to anyone else.

I see many people do product reviews without actually trying or testing the product they are reviewing. This is a huge mistake!

I get contacted by people who want me to review their products, I always stress on this point telling them that I do only honest reviews, so they will get an honest review, this includes the pros and cons, so if there is anything I see wrong in the product I will point my readers to it.

And, guess what? I mostly get the job because of just being honest!

In my latest projects – the Author hReview (aff) – plugin, I decided to close the affiliate program to members only, so no one can promote it without being a pro member. This ensures that you’ve used the plugin, you know how it works, and you actually like it!

If you haven’t tried the product yourself, or if you don’t have enough knowledge about what it does and how it actually works, then better NOT review it at all. I understand that this could be a problem, but if you approach the product owner or developer, and ask them for a review copy, they may just send you one and that way, you can do a legitimate review about it.

Promote without promoting! (soft sell)

People hate the guy who pushes them to buy something! (I think most of us would agree with that). I know you want to get a lot of sales, but how many times have you tried to promote a product and push it to people with no success?

This happened to me a lot when I first started my online business journey, especially when I write with no passion and hands on experience with what I am writing about! So, if you don’t have a passion about the product you are reviewing, chances to get sales are too low, because if you can not convince yourself, then how do you expect to convince others? In this case I would think of a different way to do my review and still promote the product, but without pushing anyone to buy it. For example: do indirect promotion.

The indirect promotion is a fantastic way to sell or conduct affiliate marketing without pushing, you can simply write about your personal experience with the product, don’t ask anyone to buy it, just talk about how good this product is, how it worked for you, and how it solved your problem. Then, finally include your affiliate links in proper spots in your review.

Some good examples of indirect promotion is to write a tutorial, give examples, and tell a success story.

Do giveaways

Giveaways is a brilliant idea for promotion, yes you are giving it for free, but you benefit from the promotion especially if you have responsive social media followers.

I do a lot of giveaways on my blog, and I do actually have more than one reason to do it. Here is two of my main giveaways goals:

Growing my readership and followers

Promoting my affiliate products

You see, people contact me from time to time asking for a review of their products. Sometimes they have short in budget and wondering about the best way to promote their products without spending money on a paid review, I simply tell them to do a giveaway!

Some other times I want to do a giveaway by myself, means sponsor a specific product (mostly because I like it), then give it away for my blog readers, nothing is wrong with that!

Giveaways make everybody happy! Do it.

Use discount codes and coupons

People love to get a discount on almost everything; they always welcome that person who helps them save money.

Discount codes or coupons is great for promotion for two reasons, first it gives you a good reason to promote the same product more than once 🙂 and second, it gives people a good reason to follow you and be able to get a discount each time you publish a new one.

Of course, we are talking here about a product that people already know and love, so you probably need to do some research before pushing out some discount codes. If people don’t like that product, this means they don’t need it; it’s useless to promote it even though you have a good offer.

If I have a good product, and a good discount offer, I won’t be shy of pushing it to people who I love!

Tell Them It is a Review

You will be surprised that many people with the “intent” of buying something generally start by searching for the product on Google. Before anything else, they want to get more information about a product, so that they can make a well informed decision. Simply put, they are looking for “reviews”.

If on the search results, they can identify your article as a review, your chances of getting their attention increases. Coupled with the authorship markup, you can almost be certain that your CTR with increase twofold.

Here’s an example (incognito mode):

Look at the results above. Which one do you think is more likely to get clicked right away? Probably it will the one where that guys picture is showing and with those “flying” stars, with a compelling rich snippets? Once the user lands on that page and if you are providing an honest and well prepared review, it is likely that you may just make a sale. While not guaranteed, increasing your chances by standing out and telling people that it is a review will lure them to visit your site and hopefully stay around for a while longer.

Next obvious question is, how do I do that? Haha, that’s where my new born “baby” comes into play. My new plugin is specially designed for authors or editorials reviews. It’s tailored for anyone who does product reviews, and wants to stand out in search results, increase their conversions, and web traffic in general. Aside from the whopping discount, there’s a neat little bonus that comes with it. Curious? What’s stopping you to take a little peek.

Now it’s your turn!

Tell me…

How do you pick a product to review? How do you convince people to buy?

30 thoughts on “How to Write Amazing Product Reviews that Converts”

Thanks Hesham! I’m one of those bloggers who actually write in-depth walk-throughs but when it comes down to promo … really bad. Going to work on that though. Your new plugin looks great as well and thanks again for these great tips, will implement them. 🙂

The biggest thing when reviewing anything is to look at the product with an unbiased view. If the product sucks, say so. If it is amazing, say that. If the product is inbetween tell your readers (and the company producing the product) how to make it better. Great post!

I really enjoyed reading your post. Loved this line ” …is to be honest to “myself” before being honest to anyone else.”

There are many people out there who review products and service without using them. And most of them think that review means writing all the good things about the product or service they are reviewing. As you said, this is wrong.

I have just stepped in, into affiliate marketing. The article was good to help me keep it on right track.

I am using the review plugin and it is really good to attract readers who come through Google.

Thanks for the plugin and for sharing your valuable thoughts about product reviews.

I don’t really see the relation between link building and reviews unless you are the owner of the product or maybe you get paid to do the review, there is nothing bad in getting paid to do reviews, either way providing an honest review is the best for all parties.

I am agree with you and think the oblique marketing is a amazing way to offer or perform online marketing without forcing, you can basically about your understanding with the item, do not ask anyone to buy it, just discuss how excellent this item is, how it conducted for you, and how it set your issue….Thanks for sharing me..

Good write up on how to actually make the sale. One of the things i believe will always work is to be honest in your review. I know people going all over the product and giving only the positive points to close the deal.

It’s important to talk about the negatives about a product as well and be honest about it. After every product/ service in the world has positives and negatives to it.

And i certainly do agree that implementing things like Authorship and review stars with authorhreview plugin definitely increase the CTR

These are some good tips for using product reviews on your site. As the article states, it is very important to write honest reviews. Even on Amazon, a lot of reviews have been found to be influenced by freebies from the manufacturers. While a fake review might get one or two sales, it is not sustainable in the long run. As people realize that your reviews can’t be trusted, they will stop coming to you for advice. However, if your reviews are consistently honest, you will gain a reputation as a go-to source for quality advice.

Thank You Hesham for this amazing read. These are really helpful tips to write product reviews. Reviews with proper and honest views are always appreciated by people. A review with just positive points and having no negative aspects seems to be fake and people do not seem to buy the products. It is important that a review should be proper and honest and this is a great way to generate more sales.

I always look around the web before purchasing a product, on reviews of not only the product itself but the site that you are looking at buying it from, the best place to look for this is to check this is to search for the company on google maps!

I agree with your views. Being honest may not fetch immediate returns but will win the good will of customers. Selling a product to a customer is never easy. If your product has competition from me-too products your job is even more difficult. Promotion should be done in a way that customer should not feel that he is being convinced. These tricks can be learnt only through experience.

well i consider reviewing a NEW product by comparing it with other already known/popular products helps a lot to visualize it.
i have searched the internet many a times looking for reviews which had comparisons with other popular products, it helps me in deciding whether to go on with the purchase or not..

Hi Hesham,
well honesty is the best policy and yes you are right, we can’t be honest to others if we not honest to ourselves. Now i come to about the reviewing thing. well it’s a very good thing if it is being done in a proper way as it really converts readers in buyers.

Hello Zebida, I think your way of teaching is unique just because its very simple and easy to apply. I agree with your opinions but I really didn\’t think about do giveaways its really impressive for me. I will be taking advantage through this. Thanks and keep writing, this is the kind of stuff I need.